Google Calendar goes down, everyone panics

If you happened to miss any important meetings today, just blame it on Google.

Google Calendar went down for millions of users this afternoon, starting at approximately 2.45pm and lasting until just a few minutes ago (around 4.30pm).

When trying to access Google Calendar during the outage, UK and European users were greeted with a message in multiple languages saying: "Google Calendar is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later. We apologize for any inconvenience."

The system now appears to be up and running, although Google's Apps Status Dashboard page says there is "service disruption," so some users may still be struggling to piece together their previously highly-organised lives.

Luke Whitehead, Head of EMEA marketing at Couchbase commented:"The need to scale to keep up with online demand is an all too familiar challenge for modern businesses. Google is no exception. To keep up with demand, speed, flexibility and scalability are crucial, this will allow Google to support millions of users across the globe, and devices, all at once. You must deliver great user experience, with a highly responsive, smooth and agile process. In 2016 users will simply not stand for websites going down and we will see users change service if this continues.”

Twitter, of course, went in to meltdown during the outage and Google Calendar is currently trending in the UK.